Getting Corporate Governance Right

By

Robert Hahn

Updated March 23, 2005 12:01 a.m. ET

The conviction last week of former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers is not just an American story. It is part of a powerful global tide toward higher standards in corporate governance -- a tide that, triggered by the American upheavals, is sweeping across most, but not all, industrial nations. The big question in the global financial and regulatory community is: When will reform come to the holdouts?

In the United States, the Ebbers conviction may be just the first of many. After a recent mistrial, former Tyco CEO Dennis...